actually fun.The Teacher’s Grammar Bookaims to take readers on a similar
voyage of discovery.
What’s New in the Second Edition
The many teachers and students who used the first edition ofThe Teacher’s
Grammar Bookprovided various suggestions over the years intended to make
the text better. I’ve tried to incorporate their suggestions into the second edition
as much as possible, and I hope they are happy with the result of this indirect
collaboration. In many respects, the finished product is significantly different
from the original. The more important changes are:
- A new chapter providing a short history of grammar and its role in education.
- A new chapter on teaching grammar that examines not only the challenges
teachers face but also what research, theory, and classroom experience tell us
constitutes “best practices.” - A significant reduction in the formalism associated with phrase structure
grammar so as to focus more on the descriptive goals of this approach to lan-
guage analysis. - A complete revision of the chapter on transformational–generative grammar
that significantly reduces the discussion of transformation rules and tree dia-
grams so as to focus more on other features of this approach, such as its influ-
ence on teaching and psychology; also new is a summary of the model—the
minimalist program—that Noam Chomsky developed to replace trans-
formational–generative grammar. - A complete revision of the chapter on cognitive grammar that not only makes
the discussion more current but also more detailed, addressing how cognitive
grammar provides insight into common problems associated with teaching
writing, such as creating meaning and errors in language. - A thorough revision of the chapter on dialects to make it both more current
and more detailed; the discussion of Chicano English is significantly ex-
panded, and new in this edition is a brief analysis of Spanglish and an explo-
ration of code switching. - Also new is the focus on teaching grammar and language as a thread that
winds through each chapter, making the text more thoroughly a tool to help
teachers meet the challenge of grammar instruction.
Chapter One. The first chapter offers a brief history of grammar in the
Western tradition. Although there are some interesting stories to tell about the
study of grammar in places like India, China, and the Middle East, they are not
very relevant to American public education, based as it is on Greek and Roman
models. The goal of this chapter, therefore, is to give readers a sense of the place
x PREFACE